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Linux users are more likely than most to be familiar with Chromium, Google's the free and open source web project that serves as the basis for their wildly popular Chrome. Since the project's inception over a decade ago, users have been able to compile the BSD licensed code into a browser that's almost the same as the closed-source Chrome. As such, most distributions offer their own package for the browser and some even include it in the base install. Unfortunately, that may be changing soon.
[...] To the average Chromium user, this doesn't sound like much of a problem. In fact, you might even assume it doesn't apply to you. The language used in the post makes it sound like Google is referring to browsers which are spun off of the Chromium codebase, and at least in part, they are. But the search giant is also using this opportunity to codify their belief that the only official Chromium builds are the ones that they provide themselves. With that simple change, anyone using a distribution-specific build of Chromium just became persona non grata.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Grishnakh on Wednesday January 27 2021, @05:50PM (5 children)
so fuck you, they own the internet now and they're altering the deal. It's the IE5/6 dark age all over again, except Google's arguably more hostile to users and developers than Microsoft has ever been.
I completely disagree.
There's one really, really huge difference between a Chrome monopoly, and the IE6 dark ages: back in those horrible times, countless websites simply did not work for me, because I was using Linux. There was no way to get IE6 working on Linux: it forced you to use Windows OS on your computer, just to use some website.
At least with a Chrome monopoly, I can use the OS of my choice. Maybe not on a Rasberry Pi, but for typical use-cases (i.e., a typical Intel/AMD desktop/laptop), I can use Linux (or Windows, or Mac). Google has no interest in pushing a Microsoft OS monopoly.
Microsoft was NEVER friendly to developers. It was only friendly to developers if they used Microsoft OSes. Use anything else, and you just got a big FU. Again, Google may have crappy dev resources compared to what MS offered Windows devs, but at least they don't force you to use Windows. I'll happily take a Google monopoly over a Microsoft monopoly for this 1 reason alone.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 27 2021, @06:37PM (1 child)
For now. It's not hard to imagine a world where the only useful build of Chrome, that supports all the shiny APIs that everyone cares about, comes from the Play Store. So you better have an Android device and a Google account in good standing else you'll be a second-class outcast, just like we were on Linux with Netscape 4 when so many things were dependent on IE.
There are at least several steps between this world and that world. But with Chrome's market share and Google's forays into being evil, it's no longer completely unimaginable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @09:02AM
There already exist HTTPS-only APIs in both Chrome and Firefox. Can't see why they can't depend on something else arbitrary chosen.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Thursday January 28 2021, @02:24AM (1 child)
Like the AC already said, "for now". The IE dark age didn't happen all at once either; when MS was taking over browser market share it made IE4 (and 5 I think?) available for Unix, then dropped it when it was no longer useful. Just like Google's doing now. Names and some details differ, but history still seems to be repeating here.
That's not really so different from Google, except that to Google the browser is the OS. They really only care about advertising, ChromeOS, and Android. Everything else is irrelevant and they only support other OSes because they still need them for now. But this shows that they're starting to not see the need any more; they're now turning the screws and saying "use Chrome or GTFO", at least to the smaller platforms.
It's also concerning that they've begun dictating the terms of how the internet works for everyone, regardless of browser. That's far worse than what MS did to the internet with IE. They say use AMP and people use AMP, because otherwise they might not show up high enough in search rankings. They say use HTTP3 or SPDY or whatever the flavour of the month is now and people use it because it's SEO suicide to not do what Google wants. They decided to neuter ad-blocking extensions with changes to their extension manifest and all the Chromium-based browsers fall into step because they have no choice, they're built on Google's code and Google doesn't have to listen to anyone. And so on.
Microsoft at its worst controlled people's entry point to the web (the browser), but Google has undue influence on everything, including that.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday January 28 2021, @04:07AM
Like the AC already said, "for now".
It's extremely unlikely, considering SO many companies (including Google I'm sure) internally use Linux for development. Google isn't an OS vendor (for the desktop), and this doesn't look likely to change any time soon. It also doesn't make sense given how they make money: they profit from people using their software so they can spy on them. How is limiting OS choice going to help them here?
MS did it because it profited from a Windows monopoly, so they wanted everyone on Windows and would do things to push people to the Windows platform, so they could sell more Windows licenses. Google doesn't have that. The entire business model is different. The only reason Google would stop support for some platforms is because the userbase is too small and they're too lazy to maintain those ports. amd64 Linux is not *that* small a userbase.
That's not really so different from Google, except that to Google the browser is the OS. They really only care about advertising, ChromeOS, and Android. Everything else is irrelevant and they only support other OSes because they still need them for now.
No, they need them forever, unless they plan to start pushing ChromeOS as a general-purpose OS (which it is not). And this would get them into major antitrust trouble, much worse than MS. Not going to happen.
They say use HTTP3 or SPDY or whatever the flavour of the month is now
I can't speak to HTTP3 (never heard of it), but SPDY was made because the standard internet protocols actually kinda suck for what we're using them for. There's a reason people are using UDP with reliability features bolted on top instead of just using TCP: TCP is ridiculously inefficient. Someone needs to come up with better protocols.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @11:37AM
The browser has become the most important piece of software on your computer. So Google doesn't have to care what operating system is running Chromium/Chrome, as long as you're using their browser they're getting what they want from you.
Further, the browser's importance keeps growing. So while you're running Chromium on Linux on the Raspberry Pi or Chrome on *BSD, Google's power increases.